


Immaculately Conceived

by theoldgods



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: 1960s, Christmas Party, Frottage, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, Sex While Ill, Yuletide, Yuletide 2016, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-08 07:11:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8835205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods/pseuds/theoldgods
Summary: The annual Circus Christmas party is as absurd as ever even without taking into account field injuries and colds, but after nearly a month in separate countries, Bill and Jim are ready for each other regardless of physical or emotional health.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musamihi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/gifts).



> For musamihi, for having a lovely letter that cemented my need to write some mild h/c for these two! Set at some point in the 60s or thereabouts and fits into movie chronology (Jim's specialty is Hungary and not Czechoslovakia, for example), although some of the bits of Bill's family and the like are taken from the book.
> 
> Feel free to drop by [my tumblr](http://theoldgods.tumblr.com) for periodic yelling/crying at _TTSS_ and these two, if that's your style!
> 
>  
> 
> Happy Yuletide to all!

Bill is standing by the punch bowl, his suit a garish shade of blue, listening to Control complain loudly about Percy Alleline within Alleline’s wife’s earshot. Alleline himself walks back and forth between his wife and the punch bowl, his banter in return sharp and sour. Jim watches a solid minute of this playacting before Control sees him and laughs.

“Priddo!” His voice is as bitter and flinty as ever; Alleline nearly drops his cup of punch. Bill does not look Jim’s way, though his entire posture expands as Control twists a beckoning finger. “Did Smiley clear you for this? Rat bastard.”

Jim grimaces as he weaves his way through the tables of Circus staff; no heads turn in his direction, but he can feel pairs of eyes darting after his retreating back as he shuffles on his twisted ankle.

“I was cleared last night. Sir.”

His voice is low—mysterious, he knows, if mostly unintentionally, giving the gawkers something to wonder about long after he’s gone. Jim has been doing a lot of leaving of late, swooping in and out of Hungary, be it for forty-eight hours or a month at a time. He focuses on Control’s pinched face, Control’s violent eyes peering from under deep hooded lids, while at the edge of his perception Bill’s blue suit bursts in and out of focus.

“You take your man here on home with you,” Control says, and, permission given, Jim turns his attention idly in Bill’s direction, as if he’d only just noticed him. “The pair of you are not fit for any decent company, and the mothers will thank you to give their kitties a rest this year.”

Bill’s nose is as red as it had been that morning, when Jim had harangued him into calling out ill for the day. When he speaks it’s in a thin, hoarse tone, thankfully less phlegmy than before.

“We all have social networks to maintain, Control.”

Control slaps Jim’s shoulder. “It’s your stringer here who runs the networks, William.” Bill winces at his full name; Jim bites his lips to hold back a smile. “Did he not tell you the circumstances that led to his ruining that ankle of his?”

Bill had indeed debriefed Jim in full after Sarratt had released him the evening before, listening to Jim’s stoic tale of gutter running—and gutter falling—in Budapest before stripping him naked and eating his arse for a full twenty minutes while Jim drifted in blissful, pain-free silence on Bill’s sofa. Bill does not dignify Control’s facetiousness with a response, turning instead to Alleline for a spot of bitching about Control while Jim gathers a cup of punch and heads to the garden.

The politicking, even after a day’s work reimmersing himself in the rubbish of the Circus, is too much after nearly a month afield. He sits in the cold air instead, taking in great edifying lungfuls of ice and carefully thinking of nothing at all until a burst of coughing heralds Bill’s arrival.

“A day off is a day off.”

Bill’s fevered hand burns where he cups Jim’s chin, his brown eyes slightly glassy in the reflected light. “Bloody idiot.”

“And the same to you. I didn’t know you were so attached to the Christmas party.”

“I hate it, of course, like any good agent.” Bill’s smile is as askew as his gaze. “And if you think I can turn away from these vipers for a full twenty-four hours—”

“All you do now is remind them that the great Bill Haydon is capable of falling ill.” Jim draws his hands, light and skittering, through Bill’s hair. “Humanizing yourself.”

“Precisely.” Bill, crouched before him, leans his hot face against Jim’s arm. “Where would I be without you to help me in that?”

Jim raises an eyebrow and glances back into the hall, but no one is visibly paying them any mind. He sinks a hand deeper into Bill’s hair, letting his fingertips brush his scalp as Bill relaxes into the touch.

“All day alone, Jimbo; you know that’s murder on my nerves.” Bill looks up briefly, his charmer’s smile sitting on his lips. “Had to dress up and come play for a while, make sure Bland hasn’t taken any of my girls.”

“Your girls like you for your fairy artist’s air,” Jim says, shifting so that Bill’s weight does not press so directly down on his bum ankle. “They’re not interested in Bland’s bullish arse, and you’re not stupid enough to think they have any exclusivity with you.”

“Thank all that’s holy.” Bill mouths lightly at Jim’s arm, and Jim continues his massage for several minutes, the cold a blanket settling over them in peaceful silence until Bill eventually begins to cough again.

“Up.”

Jim nudges at Bill until he gets to his feet, his face blotchy with the imprint of the fabric of Jim’s shirt, and downs his cup of punch while Bill wipes the corner of an eye.

“Damn this cold.”

“And damn _you_ for trailing it all over the rest of us, like we haven’t lives of our own to lead without being dragged through Haydon’s Malady.” Jim pinches Bill’s elbow; Bill titters. “Half this horror show will be sneezing by the end of the week, and we’ll all know who to blame.”

“You _are_ a crank when you’ve still got the field on you, aren’t you?” Bill murmurs as he steers them both back inside. The heat after the cold makes Jim’s body ache anew as Bill buries a sneeze into the crook of his arm. “Are you quite sure you don’t want to be a good boy and settle down permanently behind a desk like the rest of us?”

“With three women to string along and nightly gossip sessions at the club, dropping fake business stories for everyone to hear?” Jim rolls his eyes. “Why, that’s me sold; sign me up immediately.”

Bill tosses his head, allowing an errant curl to streak across his forehead, and practices an alluring sideways glance. “I have crops to tend, James.” Jim snickers as Bill pulls at a wrinkle in his suit jacket. “Stay until midnight and I’ll have something for you too.”

“And interrupt you and Molly’s sweet courtship?” Jim shakes his head. “I’m still fieldsick, and the pit of vipers is making me headachy. I’ll be gone in an hour.”

Bill chokes down a cough, dabs at his inflamed nose with a handkerchief. “Then I’ll see you then.” He pockets the handkerchief and walks back into the fray as a fresh shot of pain runs across Jim’s ankle.

* * *

Jim is honestly surprised to see Bill, huddled looking thin in a greatcoat, loitering on the street when he leaves around ten.

“And good golly, Miss Molly?” he asks, drawing his scarf around his neck as they fall into step together.

Bill’s eyes are glassy again, his cheeks red even as the rest of his face is bone white and drawn. “Her taste is better than yours, Jimbo.” His voice is hoarser than it had been in the garden; he clears his throat. “She quite rightly wants nothing to do with a plague carrier.”

“Ah, well, we can’t all have good judgment.” Jim flexes his gloved hand; Bill brushes their arms together. “A nightcap, then, is that what you’re after?”

“Yes, please.” Bill’s voice is too quiet for Jim to feel entirely comfortable taking the full piss out of him on this. Smiley had said he’d be home until the new year at the least, which gives them plenty of time to drink and moan together about their various ailments, and Bill not at the top of his game is both disconcerting and delightful, a sight Jim knows to drink in while he can.

They return to Bill’s loft, Bill having long ago sworn off the miserable, rarely used bedsit Jim calls home. Bill tosses his suit jacket over a chair and collapses almost immediately onto the same couch where, not twenty-four hours before, he’d tended to Jim’s neediness, and Jim heads for the kitchen.

“A hot toddy, then.”

“There’s a fresh bottle of Talisker from the Monster—please do use it up, get it out of here.”

Jim raises an eyebrow at the liquor cabinet. “I think not,” he says, selecting the Black & White. As he lights the stove he adds, “And when did you last see Ann Smiley, to pick up that little nickname for The Honorable Mr. Justice Haydon?”

“Oh, she’s told it to you too?” Bill’s voice perks up over the sounds of glassware as Jim roots in the cabinet. “She had me round last week, the usual pre-Christmas romp. That house is deadly dull as ever, Jimbo, but we made a pretty good time of it.”

“Parlor games with Ann and George?”

“Well, with Ann.” Bill’s voice takes on a conspiratorial tone. “You know I love George, a first-rate chap.”

Jim eyes the stubbornly silent kettle. “Oh, of course.”

“But he leaves my poor cousin wretched. Well, you know her, such a high-flying girl in our salad days, tethered to such a sober little mandarin…”

Bill continues on in his gossipy rasp, a litany of crimes both his cousin and her husband have committed against decent society, as the water slowly boils and Jim begins to mix the drinks. By the time Jim returns to the sitting room, Bill’s voice has quite run out of steam, and he sits up to take his glass from Jim with some brightness in his pallid face.

“Are you her new beau, then?” Jim asks, taking a seat next to Bill on the couch. Bill rolls his eyes over the rim of his cup, and when he’s swallowed and can speak again, his voice is faintly phlegmy.

“Far be it from me to wreck such a pristine twenty-year marriage.”

“No,” Jim agrees, as Bill leans against his shoulder, “and anyway, the Monster shouldn’t take that well at all.”

Bill snorts. “And you think he’d look up from the bench long enough to notice? No, it’s dear Mother who’d watch me fraternizing with family. Ann is not worth that headache, and for all his dowdiness, nor is poor George.”

“Is it to theirs for Christmas?”

“The full court.” Bill takes another long draught before continuing. “Husbands and all, enough to make me sick, but at least my dear pretty sisters and their lordly get will take much of the attention.” He links an arm through one of Jim’s. “It should be easy enough to slip away, pet, once I’ve let Father have his yearly scold.”

Jim himself had expected to spend this Noel in Budapest, feigning drunk with a few other surely-not-intelligence-agents all hunting the same dreary Soviet spoils to be had at this time of year. To spend part of the day with Bill instead—he nearly pinches his thigh to wake himself from whatever dream this is he’s having.

“I’ll be at home, unless something calls me into the office.”

“Russkies should know better than to start anything on Christmas,” Bill grumbles as he drains his glass. Jim looks down into the half-glass of liquid he still has and takes another sip as Bill tips his head into his lap and stretches like a cat. “If you haven’t any sort of desk duty, ignore it all.”

“Cheek coming from a man who’s spent five Christmases, at last count, holding down the fort.”

“Appearances, appearances.” Bill rubs his face against Jim’s stomach until Jim threads his fingers into his hair and resumes his massage from earlier. “And you know I’d rather take a hundred useless files than my lot at Christmas.”

“And when you’re Control, it will look very good indeed.”

Bill laughs, devolving into a spate of coughing. Jim wraps an arm around him to pound at his back until it subsides.

“All right, man?”

“I’d be fine if you’d stop telling such jokes.” Bill stretches again, drawing a leg down one of Jim’s and sending Jim’s heart briefly into his throat. “Is that what you really think of me, that I want to moulder alone and entirely paranoid at the top of the house?”

“Not enough glamor, I suppose,” Jim murmurs into his ear. Bill shivers within his grasp. “Though you could institute a policy of young men and women for all, make you _most_ popular.”

“Pimp of the Circus.” Bill grins at that, his teeth shockingly vibrant against the pallor of his skin. “The worst would be that I wouldn’t be able to tell a soul outside of the Circus. My parents would die not knowing exactly how very deeply I had shamed us all.”

“Now, come, procuring sexual liaisons is the pinnacle of polite society.”

“Ah, Jimbo, you are so Continental sometimes.” Bill tuts, his mouth still open in a smile that makes Jim’s stomach flip. “Twenty some-odd years back full-time on our island and you still think good company here _talks_ about its sins. My poor Father Confessor.”

“And who will hear mine?”

“Darling,” Bill whispers, reaching a hand up to Jim’s cheek, “you were immaculately conceived.”

It’s Jim’s turn to laugh, burying his face in Bill’s hair. “I didn’t take you for a Marian devotee.”

“No?” Bill bends to put his mouth on Jim’s neck, the lightest feverish brush. “My dear, I’ve ravished you on this very sofa; was that not enough?”

“It’s not the _devotee_ part that seems wrong,” Jim says, as his body tingles in remembrance. “It’s that bit where you compare me to the Mother of Christ, when _you’re_ the one to whom not a speck of mud will stick.”

Bill’s mouth twists, a quick flitting frown, filling his cheeks with a new flush of ruddy color. Jim’s heart quickens in his chest, at the beauty spreading in Bill’s moue, at the rich pretty secrecy he imaginatively pictures in the depths of Bill’s eyes.

“Something on your heart, William?” Jim dodges the light punch thrown at his shoulder. “A girl you haven’t yet told me about?”

Bill is always fast to tell of his conquests, at times describing them in far more detail than Jim, who has never had a predilection for women, would ever truly care to hear except for how breathless and tactile it makes Bill. Haydon’s women, like Ann Smiley’s swains, are one of the most common currencies in the Circus, and Haydon’s men rank not far below that. Jim has never had any expectation of fidelity, even if he himself feels no need to go elsewhere with his own affections; indeed, the lack of sexual faithfulness is one of the most honest things about Bill, makes each emotional confidence that much surer. If the ghost in Bill’s eyes, there and gone again even as Jim finishes his own drink and returns his hands to Bill’s head, is a lover, it’s a most unusual one indeed.

“Would that I could tell you, Jim.” The sobriety in Bill’s voice, raspy and wistful, makes Jim blink and stroke a hand down to Bill’s neck. “But you know how we are, intelligence agents, as a general race of being.”

“A most queer race indeed.”

Bill’s lips against his are blazing, as are his hands cupping Jim’s face. Jim accepts Bill’s tongue in his mouth with what he considers good humor, considering the number of pathogens likely entering his body now (Molly was right; Jim has never had good judgment where Bill is concerned), and when they break apart, Jim kisses him back, nursing Bill’s bottom lip between his teeth.

“Is that so?” Bill asks when they separate again, running his tongue where Jim had bitten. “Do you want to punish me, then, Jimmy my love?”

Jim’s stomach goes hot, as it always does whenever Bill uses one of his absurd terms of endearment, and he closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again it’s to Bill’s cracked lips on his neck, his tongue burning points of heat into Jim’s skin.

“Do you need absolution?”

Bill nips, lightly. Jim’s mouth opens slightly in response.

“I’m an ill old man, darling. My sins are never-ending.” He slides a hand down into Jim’s trousers, and Jim’s mouth opens wider. “What do you want in penitence?”

“Ten Hail Marys,” Jim says, on a rough exhale. Bill chuckles against his neck. “Or something.”

“I’ll take the something.” Bill’s hand makes contact with the skin of Jim’s prick, and they both growl. “Payable here?”

“Bed, unless you want my ankle permanently destroyed.”

Bill helps Jim off the couch, and they shuffle arm in arm toward the bed, set off in its own nook behind a curtain. Bill hurls himself onto the duvet before reaching up for Jim.

“Come, darling.”

His voice is as hoarse as it’s been all night, but the husky tone he manages to add to that makes Jim shiver anew as he strips off his shirt and reaches for the button on his trousers. Jim pauses in this to watch Bill undo his own shirt and tie, leaving them in an artful mess on the floor alongside Jim’s neater pile, and when Bill catches him watching, he smiles and flexes.

“Come, and let me.”

Jim crawls onto the bed, careful to avoid putting his weight near his bad ankle. Bill wraps his arms around his bare chest and kisses Jim’s forehead lightly, almost cautiously, before reaching for his zip. His hands are soft—so very soft, with all of that field callus Jim remembers from the years after the war now stripped clean by bureaucracy—and sure as he slides the trousers down Jim’s good leg, first, and then the bad, his touch feather-light against the hair on Jim’s legs.

Once Jim is stripped down to his pants, he reaches for the placket of Bill’s trousers. Bill bats his hand away, gently, and turns his attention to Jim’s ankle with a wet, fevered kiss.

“This is okay?”

“I might as well get the rest of me plague-ridden as well.” Jim sits slightly anxious as Bill kisses a line from his ankle to his toes, waiting for a burst of pain when Bill inevitably slips in his attention, but all he gets in response is tickling, a happy rush, for once, from nerves that have seen mostly stress and pain in the last few days. Bill has never kissed Jim’s feet before, that he knows of.

Jim smiles at the ceiling.

“Really I just want to touch you,” Bill whispers eventually, tickling the top of Jim’s foot until he jerks his attention back down to his bedmate. “Know you’re still here in one piece, and all that.”

“Sweet of you,” Jim says, sliding out of his pants with care. “That did feel...very good.” He gestures at Bill’s lower half, still clothed. “Turn and turn about.”

“Of course.” Bill draws trousers and pants off in one fluid motion before collapsing back against the duvet. “And will you forgive me if I just lie here a moment and soak you in?”

“Making the wounded man do the work.” Jim moves up toward him nonetheless, still smiling. “Between the two of us—the plague and the walking wounded—I don’t know who is more pathetic right now.”

“Oh, it’s me, surely, carrying on the way I have while you’re as stoic as ever.” Bill reaches out for Jim, kisses him quickly, sloppily. “Infecting you.”

“The damage,” Jim says, taking Bill’s prick in hand and watching as he sighs in relief, “is long done. And there is no cure.”

“Isn’t there?” Bill’s hand on Jim’s prick is warm and steady, and he bends to add his mouth. “A damned common one, I should think.”

Jim doesn’t have an answer; Bill’s mouth, even in its poorly state, is too gentle and sure for that, licking under the frenulum as he always does, as he knows, so exactly, that Jim likes. Jim lets him carry on for several minutes until he feels the first twinge of pressure in his lower abdomen, and then he lifts Bill’s chin with a trembling finger.

“You wanted to touch me.”

Bill’s overbright eyes widen some as Jim pushes him back against the pillows, before he twists to put Jim on the bottom and himself in a lurching position over him, his sweaty hair flopping across his forehead, as his hand fumbles in the nightstand and emerges with a bottle of oil he opens, one-handed and shaking slightly, onto both their cocks.

“Rest, my poor Jim.”

Bill’s body against his is slick and clammy, and as he hovers, his pelvis aligned with Jim’s, for a moment Jim thinks that what Bill truly wants above all is just a cock in his arse, some thick grounding pleasure to take him out of the haze of his cold. The drag of prick against prick is slightly unexpected, and the jolt it sends up Jim’s spine is all the sweeter.

Their faces are close, Bill’s breath across his nose and mouth as he takes both their pricks in hand and strokes in time to the thrust of his hips. Jim’s own hips undulate back and forth against the duvet, and he grips Bill’s arse for counterbalance, pushing them that much closer together.

Bill comes across Jim’s stomach in five minutes, his face going entirely splotchy. Jim takes over the wanking, more frenzied than before, focusing mostly on his own stubborn cock, as Bill wipes the worst of the semen with his own bare hand before pressing a kiss to the skin underneath and trailing his mouth to the base of Jim’s prick. As Jim tightens his hold, thrusting harder into his hand, Bill mouths one of his balls.

“Ah, Christ—”

Bill hums around him in response, and it’s with Bill’s mouth and his own hand that Jim eventually releases, a short, sharp burst behind his eyeballs that leaks outward, dousing even his ankle in relief.

When he comes back to himself, Bill has found a flannel and is cleaning them both, scratchy but light against Jim’s skin. By the time he finishes and curls up alongside Jim, his breath rattles less than it did earlier that evening, though his nose is still red.

“Stay.”

Jim walks the fingers of one hand up Bill’s bare spine, watching the progression of goose pimples in their wake, and kisses Bill’s forehead.

“You need sleep.”

“Yes.” Bill clears his throat, flexes his toes against Jim’s shins. “And how can I sleep knowing you’re out there in the world and not by my side?”

Jim snorts; Bill grins.

“I shan’t kick you, Jimbo, and I shan’t complain when I wake and you’ve gone to work.”

“Does that mean you’ll take another day off tomorrow?”

“I said no such thing.” Bill tickles the back of his knee. “But two nights in a row—it’s been a long time, darling.”

Jim brushes his fingers through the hair falling across Bill’s face, rubs a thumb through the sickness-induced wetness in the corner of one weary eye.

“It’s been a long autumn, hasn’t it, Bill?”

Bill closes his eyes, and another ghostly frown appears on his mouth, deepening as Jim trails his thumb down to his lips.

“Yes. So much talk, and never you here to tell it to.”

His breath against Jim’s thumb is hot, and he opens his mouth to press his tongue along the callus there. Jim tightens the grip of his other arm around Bill’s waist.

“I’m home now,” he says, moving his thumb back and forth across Bill’s bottom lip.

“Thanks be to Christ.”

Jim pulls the duvet over them and listens to Bill’s ragged breathing until sleep comes for them both.


End file.
